to 5,000 watts and the sale of the station to the KVET Broadcasting Company, headed by Austin businessman Roy Butler, for $5,000. The sale came as the company was planning two large expansions. It had filed to build an FM radio station, and by the time of the Butler sale, the company held the construction permit for a television station on channel 24, which it had held since 1963 but had not put on the air. The former came on the air March 30, 1969, as KASE-FM. The television station permit would be sold to McAlister Television Enterprises and then to a group in which former governor Allan Shivers was a member, and put on the air in 1971 as KVUE. KVET switched formats on April 14, 1969 to country music, and the "Country Giant" was born. "Noche de Fiesta" moved from KVET to sister station KASE-FM, airing in the morning from 5:30am-8am. Popular celebrity DJs Arleigh Duff, Penny Reeves, Jerry Gee and Sammy Allred took KVET to the top of the local ratings during the 1970s. In the 1980s, KVET aired country music, news and sports, including Houston Oilers and Dallas Cowboys football, but its ratings continued to slide as listeners moved to FM. From talk to sports In September 1990, KVET began a simulcast on 98.1 FM, which had previously been the home of Top 40 KHFI-FM, which moved to 96.7; the arrangement was part of a then-rare local marketing agreement between the new owner of the 98.1 frequency, Spur Capital, and KVET. The music mix was differentiated from KASE, which had become a country music station itself, by being more traditional than its stablemate. The Sammy Allred and Bob Cole Morning Call-In Show began at the same time. In 1995, after the FCC legalized broadcast duopolies, Butler purchased KVET-FM outright. By that time, the AM was already being split off from the now-successful FM, slowly shifting to talk radio programming over the course of 1993 and 1994. KVET was an ABC Information Network affiliate and also aired syndicated talk shows. By late 1994, the shift was complete with KVET and KVET-FM only simulcasting the morning show hosted by Sammy Allred and Bob Cole, but the talk station garnered poor ratings. At the end of 1997, Capstar Broadcasting—which would later merge into Clear Channel Communications, a forerunner of current owner iHeartMedia—purchased KVET, KVET-FM and KASE for $90 million.